Cybersecurity Trends: Demand for Specialized Skills

January 3, 2025

As the business landscape continues to be shaped by the ever-evolving world of tech, it’s more important than ever to close skills gaps, boost your team’s tech knowledge, and understand the roles that are growing within the industry. With insights from cybersecurity employment trends and the latest CompTIA Tech Jobs Report showing an increasing demand for specialized skills, investing in training and upskilling your team can help your organization stay competitive, build more robust capabilities, and retain talented employees.

Cybersecurity skills are in high demand.

According to Cyberseek, from September 2023 through August 2024, only 83 cybersecurity workers were available for every 100 cybersecurity jobs demanded by employers. There were also over 457,000 openings requesting cybersecurity-related skills, including dedicated cybersecurity roles and infrastructure, data, and software development roles. On average, it took 21% longer to fill cybersecurity roles than other IT positions. By sharpening your team’s security skills, you can build the talent you need without the long, expensive process of hiring new team members.

Upskill your team and protect your business with cybersecurity training solutions from CompTIA

Cybersecurity measures, including advanced training for employees in your organization, help strengthen your company’s ability to prevent security incidents, data breaches, and losses of critical systems. A cybersecurity breach can be catastrophic for your company’s business outlook and its reputation in the industry. CompTIA offers a range of cybersecurity training and security options for upskilling your team, including CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CySA+) and CompTIA PenTest+.

CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CySA+)

CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CySA+) is designed to turn seasoned cybersecurity professionals into experts and give them the skills and knowledge to lead incident detection, prevention, and response through continuous security monitoring.

Topics include:

Security Operations: To improve security operations processes and identify malicious activity.
Vulnerable Management: This is used to implement vulnerability assessments and make recommendations.
Incident Response and Management: Includes concepts of attack methodology frameworks and performing incident response activities.
Reporting and Communication: Covers communication best practices for action plans, escalation, and metrics.

CompTIA PenTest+

CompTIA PenTest+ is the only training and certification on the market that covers all aspects of vulnerability management, including hands-on vulnerability assessment, scanning, and analysis, as well as planning, scoping, and managing weaknesses.

Topics include:

Planning and Scoping: Covers techniques for governance, risk, and compliance, as well as scoping and organizational/customer requirements.
Information Gathering and Vulnerability Scanning: For passive/active reconnaissance, vulnerability scanning, and vulnerability management.
Attacks and Exploits: Includes approaches to expanded attack surfaces, researching social engineering techniques, performing attacks, and post-exploitation techniques.
Reporting and Communication: Focuses on the importance of reporting and communication in an increased regulatory environment during the penetration testing process.
Tools and Code Analysis: Identify scripts in various software deployments, analyze scripts or code, and use various tools.

Get more insights into the specialized skills your company needs with the Tech Jobs Report

Each month, our Tech Jobs Report provides a comprehensive overview of the current tech job market and opportunities across the industry, location, role, and experience level. It offers valuable insights for companies looking to navigate the evolving landscape of tech employment and optimize their training strategies.

Tech employment remained flat last month, but the demand for specialized skills is on the rise

While tech employment overall decreased by just 0.4% in August, there were 211,000 new tech job postings for a total of just over 500,000 active tech job postings. The 3.4% unemployment rate in tech also remains below the 4.2% overall U.S. unemployment rate. There was also an increase in job postings for specialized roles, including software developers and data-related positions. Below, you’ll find more key highlights from the September 2024 report based on data from the previous month.

Tech job postings by role

Software Developers and Engineers: 52,322 job postings (+3,320)
IT Project Management, Data Analysts, Emerging, Other: 7,216 job postings (+732)
Data Scientists: 22,706 job postings (+2,036)
Tech Support Specialists: 18,441 job postings (+307)
Network Architects: 9,146 job postings (+855)

Tech employment by sector

IT and Custom Software Services and System Design: 2,551,800 (+3,400)
PC, Semiconductor, Components Manufacturing: 1,097,100 (-2,500)
Telecommunications: 624,400 (+700)
Cloud Infrastructure, Data Processing, Hosting: 494,400 (+500)
Other Info Services, Search, Platforms: 175,200 (+600)